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ADDRESS 



OF 



HON. DAilGL iEEDHAM 



AT THE 



DEDICATION OF THE TOWN HALL 



FALMOUTH, MASS., 



SEPTEMBER 29, 1881. 



JOSEPH S. FAY, (iEO. E. CLAPvKE, J AS. M. LAMBERT, 



COMMITTEE. 



^. 



« 






AYER, MASS. : 



PRINTED AT THE PUBLIC SPIRIT OFFICE. -^ ^jq 



ADDRESS 



OF 



ION. DANiE nmm 



AT THE 



DEDICATION OF THE TOWN HALL 



AT 



FALMOUTH, MASS., 



SEPTEMBER 29, 1881. 



4 



JOSEPHS. FAY, GEO. E. CLARKE, JAS. M. LAMBERT, 

COMMITTEE. 



AYER, MASS. : 
PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLIC SPIRIT. 



Falmouth, Oct 5, 1881. 
Hon. Daniel Needham, 

Dear Sir. — Believing that the distribution among our towns- 
men of your admirable address delivered at the dedication of our 
new Town Hall on the 29th of September, would be productive 
of much good, the Committee in charge of the services, on that 
occasion, respectfully ask for a copy of the address for publica- 
tion. 

Very respectfully, 

Joseph S. Fay, > 

Geo. E. Clarke, >- Committee. 

J. M. Lambert, ). 



Boston, Nov, 22, 1881. 
To Joseph S. Fay, Esq., Geo. A. Clarke, Esq., and J. 31. Lam- 
bert, Esq., 
Gentlemen. — Your request for a copy of the Address deliv- 
ered by me at the dedication of the new Town Hall at Falmouth, 
Sept. 29th, 1881, came to hand at a time when official engage- 
ments fully occupied my time. I hasten now to forward you 
the Address in accordance with your kind request. 

Very EespectfuUy, 

Daniel Need ham. 






ADDRESS. 



Maf it please your Exxellency, Mr. Chairman, fellow citizens 
and ladies and gentlemen : 

With bowed heads, reverent hearts and grieved minds, a 
nation extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, 
has followed the remains of its dead chief from the Capitol 
city to its final resting place. The tolling bell in every 
village and district and city in the great land has mourn- 
fully, recited the story of his tragic death, and the neart 
stricken grief of a bereaved people. 

He was a true type of American manhood, elevated from 
the people, among the people, by the people, by a recognition 
of those qualities of heart and mind which for more than a 
century have been the outgrowth of our institutions and 
the foundation of our government. We see the elected 
and beloved ruler yield the life so dear to us all, and doubly 
dear to us in him our accepted president, and no confusion 
of the civil policy, no delay in the establishment of suc- 
cession comes to the Republic, whose life and security 
has been and is in a recognition of the capacity of the peo- 
ple to make their own laws and elect their own rulers. 

Turning from the sad thoughts and scenes of the last 
three months, without for a moment forgetful of the lesson 
they have taught and the immortal pages they have made 
in our National history, the town of Falmouth, incorpor- 
ated June the 4th, 1686, gathers in its son's and daughter's 
for cono-ratjLilation in the erection of this beautiful structure 



and for an hour's consideration of the connection establish- 
ed between the town hall and the stability of the great gov- 
ernment, which, without shock or misgiving, whilst it has 
dropped upon the grave of its dead chief the tears of sor- 
row, it has given to its new and acknowledged head the 
respect of loyalty and the confidence of love. 

What son of Falmouth is not proud of this day ? What 
son of Falmouth, whose father has looked out upon this 
broad and beautiful ocean — familiarized himself with the 
ever passing fleet of moving ships over the waters of Buz- 
zard's Bay and Vineyard Sound, does not to-day rejoice, 
that the labors of sire and grandsire, planted deep the roots 
of self-government, out of which, individual manhood has 
been secured for every descendant ! What son of Fal- 
mouth, who in youth wandered from the native soil and 
aided in building new homes and new civilization in later 
established settlements^ is not proud that he can come back 
to-day and refresh his eyes with the landscape of his boy- 
hood — the light-house of Nobska Hill ; the high undulating 
shores of the distant islands, and the ever changing beau- 
ties of the surrounding sea ! 

Home — home — what is it not ? Can the painter put it 
on canvas ? Can the poet weave it into verse ? Can the 
orator picture it by metaphor or anecdote ? No — no. It 
is of the heart, and appeals to the affections as no other as- 
sociations can. And when after the lapse of generations, 
the aged man or woman returns to the native home, al- 
though grave stones alone indicate the names of the old 
friends and acquaintances, the forms and faces of the de- 
parted, again people the villages, walk the streets and utter 
benedictions for the sons who remain to fill their places. 

Is it among the high peaks of our New England moun- 
tains, or upon its green valleys through which flow the 
streams which have given industry and thrift more than 



their normal significance, or down by the waters of the 
great ocean, where noble ships ride at anchor and the 
beating waves forever chant the requiem for the dead, and 
marches for the living, — the home never loses its won- 
drous power of inspiration, but comes back as the ever re- 
curring spot upon which the character of life received its 
first and most durable impression. 

It is not an idle or ceremonious matter when we revisit the 
scenes of our nativity. Though the gray locks may encir- 
cle our brow — though the elastic step may long since have 
taken its departure ; though the mind from excessive labor 
or lapse of time, has lost its relish for the current activities 
of business and government, youth with its wild fancies — 
bold determination, and almost buoyant step, comes back 
to us as in the days of yore, making us again children on 
the lawn, in the old church, at the school, or fishing in the 
waters of the Bay. Native born and adopted citizens as- 
semble to-day to dedicate this beautiful edifice erected 
and paid for by the people of Falmouth, to the purposes 
of civil liberty and popular government. 

That it is in strange contrast with the rude structures 
of the early settlers ; that its high walls, beautiful frescoes, 
and convenient architectual arrangement, is significant of 
prosperous homes and the cultivation of improved taste and 
skill, in no way effects the connecting link between the 
town hall, as the foundation institution of the people's gov- 
ernment and the great government of the people which en- 
folds in its benign and protecting embrace, fifty millions of 
willing, cheerful and happy subjects. 

Falmouth has not been destitute of the rich experience 
which has come to most of our early Massachusetts settle- 
ments. Her lands among the best, if not the best of Cape 
Cod ; her sons developing the interests of commerce by 
the early establishment of trade on the high seas ; repel- 



ling the invasion of a foreign foe which won the admira- 
tion of the lion-hearted British officers, who in the royal 
Nimrod, bombarded the town in the summer of eighteen 
hundred and fourteen ; and at a later time when the flag of 
the Republic was imperilled, going forth to subdue the 
spirit of Rebellion, the seeds of which had been planted by 
slavery and nurtured by the deep shadows which unrecog- 
nized human independence threw over our developing civil- 
ization ; have enabled her to maintain her prominence as a 
municipality, and secure for her sons a record of manly 
history, which will forever adorn the archives of the Great 
Republic. 

Through the vista of nearly two centuries, can the peo- 
ple of Falmouth scan the growth and development of their 
town. 

Two centuries ! Could the mothers of Falmouth, in that 
far off period, with their spinning wheels and hand looms 
industriously manufacturing cloth and clothing for all the 
members of the household — could the fathers, breaking the 
land with heavy and expensive wrought iron ploughs and 
harvesting with rude implements and weary labor, have 
looked down this grand vista and seen the progress to be 
made in the five generations which would succeed them, 
they might have well considered their toil and labor the 
seed sowing for a harvest of intelligence and wealth to be 
gathered by their posterity, and the results woven into a 
fabric which would adorn and aid in immortalizing a great 
nation. 

Let this be the thought of the hour — to trace the con- 
nection between the past and the present — the perilous and 
laborious days of the fathers, with the prosperous and 
prospering days of the sons; the independence of indi- 
vidual manhood and the prosperity of man and state and 



nation, with the independence of the Town Hall, the State 
House, and the National Capitol. 

Who of us, however broad his reading ; however thought- 
ful his study ; however brilliant his imagination, can real- 
ize with the most distant approximation the beaten path- 
way of two centuries of New England life. 

The wilderness ; the wild beasts of the forest; the wilder 
men of the new world; the rude altars established for pub- 
lic worship ; and the rude cabins which made the altars 
possible, and protected and sheltered the neighborhood, 
which -n two hundred years was to give tone and direction 
to a nation of fifty millions of people ; whose voice could 
be 'heard among all people as missionaries and teachers ; 
whose humane institutions were to remodel the penal insti- 
tutions of the world ; whose fiscal influence would depress 
or elevate the Bourse of Paris, and the Exchequer of Eng- 
land, whose flag would command the respect of all nations, 
and whose legislation would liberalize the rule of Emper- 
ors and Kings. 

Look at that feeble band of men and women seeking 
shelter, from European tyranny in the wilds of an unex- 
plored continent. See their limited means ; their exposed 
families , their abandonment of race and kindred, and com- 
fortable homes, to establish the recognition of right to 
individual manhood and citizenship. 

The eye grows dim as we look adown the long passage 
over which like an army of progress they have tramped — 
tramped— tramped— with the rights of man on their ban- 
ner, and the herald of truth, like the flame of fire, leading 
the triumphant march. 

The mind becomes abashed as through the long pages 
of history it contemplates the small beginning ; the rapid 
growth and the glorious progress secured by our American 
culture. 



8 

No hereditary right to reign ; no inheritance by King or 
potentate as though the people were flocks and herds; 
cessation of wars of conquest ; free development of com- 
merce ; ample provision for the unfortunate poor, insane 
and aged ; economy in the administration of government 
and equal representation as the basis of government : — 

This was the new gospel ; in the language of the great 
English preacher, uttered in 1688: — "The dominion of 
Kings changed for the dominion of laws, and the dominion 
of priests to the dominion of reason and conscience." 

In looking back through the progress of the generations, 
what most impresses us of the highest consequence in the 
growth we have had and the National influence we have 
secured. 

Is it not our m.aterial prosperity, evidences of which meet 
us in almost every home, and to-day, for this town of 
Falmouth, culminates in this convenient and beautiful Town 
Hall .? 

Material Prosperity. Write it out. Look at it and 
read it carefully. It is the crowning glory of New England, 
and has made possible the highest culture in church and 
school and state. 

Material Prosperity. What is society without it ! 
Be ye fed and be ye clothed will do nothing for a hungry 
man and a naked people. Talk to the hungry of religion, 
of virtue, of humanity ; talk to the shivering mothers in vain 
trying to give warmth to their freezing babes — will they hear 
you } Do they listen ? Can they listen ? Pile up the 
church spires to the clouds, fill in the walls with precious 
stones, adorn the windows with marvelous designs, but do 
they who are hungry and cold behold the beautiful archi- 
tecture and admire the skill of the artist ! No, no ! Hunger 
must be appeased ; cold must be held back ; and then, when 
to the weakened body comes refreshing food and to the cold 



9 

limbs the artificial heat which nature is unable to supply, the 
temple may raise its high tower and the walls thereof may 
be made to tell of the wondrous riches of the earth and the 
artistic power of man, and then appreciating minds will 
drink it in, and souls will be elevated and new creations 
will be born to humanity. 

Material prosperity underlies civilization and Christianity ; 
it underlies humanity itself, for all human development 
grows out of it. It is before the home — for the home de- 
pends upon it — and the home precedes the school and the 
church. 

Material prosperity wherever we find it is piima facie 
evidence of manhood. On the farm it advertises the virtue 
and good habits of the occupant. The well-painted house, 
the comfortable barn, the well-tilled fields all tell of a useful 
life and manly cultivation. The home of the mechanic with 
its garden of flowers or house plants arranged on portico or 
window sill ; the neat and tidy wife and children — reflecting 
shadows from polished floors ; the family library made up 
of the Bible, the dictionary and a few useful and instruct- 
ive books, supercede an introduction of the owner to give 
assurance of his value as a citizen and his good habits as a 
man. 

The sailor who imperils his life upon the great ocean and 
seeks the treasures of the deep waters, that homes may be 
built up and communities enriched by a hazardous but in- 
telligent industry, adds to his native land that which nature 
having denied, skill and enterprise can alone supply. 

Is it a wonder then that material success is the first 
thought of young men and women ! Not only does home 
depend upon it, but society, which represents aggregated 
homes and builds roads and bridges, schoolhouses and 
churches ; establishes laws and provides means for protect- 
ing the well disposed from the vicious and lawless. 



10 

No wonder that the young maiden, having finished her 
technical school days and contemplating the future, looks 
over the young men who compose the neighborhood, with 
a business-like eye, determined, if possible, that her life 
partner shall be thrifty and successful in the pursuits of 
active life. 

No wonder that the young man, as he leaves school, 
thinks over his fitness for a trade or occupation, and con- 
templates with anxiety the success which has" attended and 
may attend his chosen employment. 

No wonder that the luminous marks of success at the 
forum, in the pulpit, in the halls of state, in the factory and 
mill, on the farm, in mechanics and in art, here and there 
lifting up their shining faces and receiving the admiration 
and honor of the masses, distract and bewilder the youth 
starting out on an untried pilgrimage over a way for which 
no chart or compass can be supplied, and industry, intelli- 
gence and virtue have proved the only successful safe- 
guards. 

No wonder that the end, so fascinating and brilliant, 
should be desired without pursuing the uncertain and labo- 
rious way by which the world's grand and noble specimens 
of manhood have secured results. 

But as true as '*no cross no crown," there is no well 
developed manhood without persistent and skillfully planned 
industry and patient, intelligent, plodding labor. 

New England has been foremost in its schools ; in its 
colleges ; in its churches ; in its beneficent and charitable 
institutions ; in its gifts of teachers and missionaries at 
home and abroad ; but its power has rested upon its patient 
and persistent industry and its constant hunger for intel- 
lectual and religious development. 

Take out the intelligent industry from New England 
and you take out all that has made and still continues to 



11 

make her a beacon light to the nation and the world. To 
attempt to attain the end without the struggle is as idle as 
to attempt scholarship without study or wisdom without 
observation. 

A neighbor of my father's in a seaboard town, having 
several ships engaged in the South American trade, and 
being a man of wealth, desired to make captains of his sons, 
who were too indolent to study the laws of navigation. He 
accomplished his purpose, and secured insurance on his 
ships, and safety for his cargoes, by employing well qualified 
mariners for first mates and paying them captain's wages. 
The sons, although captains by name, never knew the com- 
pensation which comes from the labor preceding the suc- 
cessful mastery of an occupation. 

Such captains could never have positions among captains, 
and would only exist as laughing stocks among practical 
men. 

Though endowed with a large inheritance, these sons, 
after the death of their father, spent all their patrimony, 
and died bankrupts in the endeavor to carry on a business 
which they were too indolent to learn. 

The rugged and sterile soil of New England promised but 
little to the early settlers; but without wealth, without 
distinction of birth, with plain manners and modest ambi- 
tions, the fathers overcame rugged hills, sterile soil and un- 
inviting climate by manly character. The man, superior 
to every obstacle, made the surmounting of each hindrance 
a stepping-stone the better to enable him to overcome every 
succeeding one. 

They found a wilderness ; they have left a land covered 
with productive farms. They entered the realms of barbar- 
ism, but with intelligent industry they permeated barbarism 
with a higher and better civilization than the world had 
ever known. Not wealth ; not social distinction ; not in- 



12 

heritance of name or title, but character — real manhood 
secured for them this grand conquest. This character our 
fathers taught us to venerate — this manhood in the highest 
example of sire and grandsire they have left for our emula- 
tion. 

Shall the success of the past typify the success of the 
future*? The conditions have changed. Means have be- 
come more abundant and inherited wealth is an every-day 
matter. The chances of enterprise and manly develop- 
ment lessen almost in direct rado with the amount of 
wealth inherited. It is the young man born to fortune 
about whom society should now be anxious. He who starts 
with only his hands and brains finds himself courted neither 
by the poor or rich. To him temptation is a comparative 
stranger. His necessities require his time, and busy hours 
are the woof of his life. The gambler and sharper stand 
aloof, for in him there is no magnet of attraction. 

But the youth born to fortune ! Look at him ! Hemmed 
in from early infancy by the best of organized society, edu- 
cated at the select schools, he starts out a full positioned 
man on the very threshold of his active life. Jockeys make 
love to him ; gamblers in the fashion of high-bred gentle- 
men flatter him ; fashionable society courts him ; and on 
every hand temptation in its most attractive form comes 
forth to salute him and do him honor. If he resists temp- 
tation and establishes habits of prudence and thrift, he de- 
serves a thousand times more credit than the young man 
born to no fortune but a healthy body and a sound mind. 

Yet the struggle for wealth that the sons and daughters 
may have large inheritances was never greater than to-day. 
The thousands who have fallen ; the thousands who are fall- 
ing,make no impression upon the thousands of fathers whose 
ambition from month to month and year to year seems only 
the accumulation of property. 



13 

May we not stop a moment in this ambition for wealth 
for which so many appear to have no use and which at the 
best may paralyze the ambition and enterprise of children, 
and see if the accumulators may not attain a higher useful- 
ness by a more liberal expenditure in their own lifetime ! 
How many a man has gone to his grave dwarfed in his 
manhood by the scrimping expenditures made upon him- 
self ! How many a wife has secured a premature decay 
by an ever-continuing toil which a more liberal outlay of the 
husband in support of a higher type of domestic policy 
would have prevented. 

How many times an over-anxious desire for accumulating 
has prevented the accumulator from recognizing his first 
great fiscal duty to society, the payment of an honest and 
just tax ! thus debarring himself from doing his full part 
toward the support of the educational institutions of his 
country and paying his legal part of providing for the un- 
fortunate poor and insane. No man can afford thus to im- 
peril his manhood by withholding the discharge of that duty 
which the acceptance of citizenship imposes. This is the 
help wealth can give to its less fortunate neighbors without 
humiliating them. 

The danger to New England and the nation from inher- 
ited wealth may not be great ; but the loss of enterprising 
men who but for this illusion might add lustre and distinc- 
tion to our American citizenship, cannot be a matter un- 
worthy the serious thought of our New England fathers. 

The great female orator of America, who has recently 
won as high distinction in Europe as she has heretofore in 
her own country, has a lecture on " What shall we do with 
our girls .^" The interrogatory may be applied to our boys 
as well. So solicitous are we that our'boys should do^well, 
that we often find them at the threshold of manhood with 
a capacity for no useful labor, and stinted and dwarfed by 



14 

our over anxiety that their future will not be provided for. 
We have given them an education ! Yes, that is pretty 
generally done, if passing them through the stages of gram- 
mar and high school and college will secure education. But 
what then ? Education of books is well ; but it is a small 
part of education for life. Even college education will fail 
in earning bread and butter for a family, unless it is di- 
rected to some practical end. 

Colle.2:e education is not everything. It may be a help, 
but it necessarily secures nothing in the w^ay of practical 
work. Unless a man be apt to teach, as Horace Mann so 
well said, it will not even make a teacher of him. 

Fathers must not deceive themselves by believing that 
everything is accomplished for their sons when by great in- 
dustry, self-sacrifice and economy they have secured for 
them a college education. 

Fathers must not deceive their sons by allowing them to 
believe that a mastery of Greek and Latin is a conquest 
which will secure homesteads and full purses. 

The tree that bears the golden fruit has a differ- 
ent ROOT FROM THE VERBS OF DEAD LANGUAGES. 

Some years since a graduate of a New England college 
called at my office with a letter of introduction from a well 
known professor. Asking the young man to be seated, I 
asked him how I could serve him. He said he desired a 
cashiership in a bank, and wished my assistance. Have 
you ever been in a bank .? No, sir. What are your quali- 
fications for so high a position } I have been through col- 
lege. That is well. I stood high in mathematics. Tliat 
is well, too, I replied. What more .? To my astonishment, 
he said. Can anything more be needed ? I replied, O yes. 
Going through college is well enough, but it is a small part 
of the qualifications you need. I then told him he must 
have a knowledge of the business. How can I get that ? 



15 

By beginning at the bottom and working up. Do you 
mean, said he, that I shall go into a bank and sweep and 
dust ? I replied that was not necessary— but that in order 
to establish his claim to a cashiership he must begin with a 
clerkship and work up through the grades of positions until 
his fitness was recognized by the directors. Said I, if 
your father is a rich man and desires to establish a bank 
and make you the cashier, he would have a perfect right to 
do so— as he alone takes the risk— but when a Board of Di- 
rectors, who are trustees of the property of stockholders, 
select a cashier, the business public would never justify 
them in taking a man who was not educated to the busi- 
ness. 

The young man left my office with a sorrowful counte- 
nance, remarking that his college course had been of no 
service to him, and that four years of valuable life had been 

lost. 

This is by no means an isolated case. Thousands ot 
young men, who are graduated from our colleges, fail to 
find out that text book knowledge has not necessarily a 
money value until brought face to face with the unwelcome 

discovery. 

It is too bad in this busy and practical world to allow 
any young m.an to think for a moment that he has not his 
share of the work to perform. Out of usefulness comes 
happiness. Not out of money ! not out of education ! not 
out of an honored ancestry, however noble or grand ! but 
out of usefulness ! Out of real life work, in a life in- 
dustry by which the world will be made better, wiser, 
strono-er! by which yokes will be lifted from burdened 
necks'*! by which griefs will be assuaged and life made more 
acceptable to the toiUng millions. 

The frequent failures of college graduates to the attam- 
ment of an ideal, is that their means of obtaining the ideal 



16 

are not of a practical character, and the fault is largely in 
home neglect. 

The Technical School ; the Agricultural College, and to 
an extent the scientific course, come in to supply a much 
needed help. An acre of ground to plow and plant 

AND HOE AND HARVEST, IS FULLY EQUAL TO A GYMNASIUM 
FOR RECREATION, AND FAR BETTER FOR DISCIPLINE. 

What shall we do with our young men ? Certainly the 
least we can do is to give them the benefit of our own ex- 
perience and observation. 

We know that intelligent industry and economy have 
made the wealth and wisdom of men. That if the product- 
ive forces stopped, we should destroy ourselves as a nation 
in a space of time easily measured by a generation. 

That to grow and hold our present growth we must have 
as active generations in the future as we have had in the 
past. 

Let it be written and published and preached, for the 
pulpit is not too sacred a place for its utterance, that all 
useful labor is honorable — that labor is necessary for human 
progress and that the best means out of which to develop a 
man is to educate him from first to last to the necessity of 
usefulness by manly occupation. 

He who is educated to a useful industry, lives in the very 
air of thrift. Dependent upon no one — waiting upon no 
one — self-poised he moves grandly along the pathway of life, 
building and maintaining a comfortable home and making a 
record of usefulness at every turn, his life is a varied field 
upon which he reaps as with the sickle of the husbandman 
an ever maturing harvest of human happiness. 

The history of humanity has established beyond ques- 
tion — 

1st. That well developed manhood depends largely upon 
an appreciation of physical activity. 



17 

2d. That in order to secure the most valuable type of 
physical activity, there must be a training of the physical 
qualities of the man, which will respond to his studied and 
carefully conceived ideal, 

3d. That in the ratio of well directed physical activity is 
the true growth of national greatness and prosperity. 

No country offers to its people opportunities for better 
homes than our own. Our diversified climate compassing 
in its extent a temperature of every desirable character ; 
our varied soil, adapted to the production of every fruit and 
grain ; our high mountains, deep valleys and broad prairies, 
giving a variety of landscape unsurpassed and opportunities 
for homestead selections in accordance with the most varied 
tastes and means, make our physical territory a rare inheri- 
tance to our sons and a marvelous temptation to the rest- 
less and more enterprising people of other nationalities. 

Our condition as a people, to-day, is in wonderful con- 
trast with every other civilized nation. 

Prosperity is everywhere. From the most indifferent 
workman who easily commands his dollar a day to the most 
successful farmer, mechanic, manufacturer or merchant, who 
has broadened his field of usefulness and activity, so that 
neighborhoods and even large municipalities depend upon 
his life ; and his income ranges far beyond his varied and 
increasing wants. 

For four years have the farmers of America been feeding 
the people of Europe. That starvation would have existed 
even on the shores of the Danube as it has existed among 
the people of the far East had not the products of Ameri- 
can agriculture been within their reach, is not a statement 
admitting of doubt or question. 

The falling off of our exports of grain is what every care- 
ful observer of trade has long expected. Better harvests 



18 

abroad lessen the temporary demands for our exports of 
agricultural products. 

But the prosperity of American agriculture is not depend- 
ent upon the starving people of Ireland, England or Russia. 

The education of our people is constantly developing new 
uses to which our soil products can be devoted. Corn is 
converted by the process of fermentation to grape sugar, 
and the day is not far distant when art will devise the pro- 
cess by which as valuable a granulated sugar shall be made 
of the corn stalk as is now made from the sugar cane. When 
that shall be discovered, the increased value of corn product 
is a matter beyond the possibility of estimation. Already 
the production of glucose and grape sugar have added large- 
ly to the value of this great American staple. Recently, 
directly from the corn, a process of manufacturing lactic 
acid has been discovered — and if this is a practical success, 
as there is every reason now for believing it is, a new and 
vast field will be opened to the American corn raiser and^ a 
new industry presented to our people of supplying the world 
at a cheap rate with a chemical substance that will entirely 
supercede cream of tartar. 

The sugar beet culture is still in its infancy — but enough 
has been established to satisfy the most incredulous observ- 
er, that the few remaining obstacles in the way of com- 
plete triumph will soon be overcome. 

Our new processes of manufacturing flour have greatly 
stimulated the wheat culture of the country, and are mak- 
ing our American wheat, which contains a larger proportion 
of starch than any wheat produced on the Continent of 
Europe, an indispensable luxury in every home of wealth in 
the civilized world. 

Our cotton crop compasses every variety of the raw mate- 
rial, and although England has expended millions in her 
efforts to make her mills independent of our Southern 



19 



planters, and has given utterance time and again to the at- 
tainment of an assured success, she is no nearer independ- 
ence than she was before the great Rebellion. 

Never was the prospect of a great ingathering harvest ot 
compensation better for the cotton planter of the South 
than in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-one. 

The cattle products of Texas, New Mexico and the more 
distant States and territories of America have established 
their markets not only in the Western, Middle and Eastern 
States but throughout England and Germany. This busi- 
ness, already making immense traffic for our railroads and 
steamships and taking high rank among our exports, is des- 
tined to be one of the most important fields which Ameri- 
can industry has undertaken to explore. It cannot be 
measured. No return of frequent rains; no patronage of 
.government by subsidy or land grant; no education^ by 
tchool or Agricultural College, can enable the older nations 
of Europe to compete with America in this immeasurable 
business which is now so rapidly developing. 

Let us o-ive one thought to the industry and the pros- 
pects of our New England manufactures. No prosperity 
of the past can yet challenge comparison with the prosperity 
of to-day. Mill after mill has been reared and the waters of 
our New Englandrivers have been exhausted in the ability to 
furnish power for the increasing industry and enterprise of 
our people. Our cotton and woolen manufactures find a 
market in every part of our own country, and to a limited 
extent compete with the products of England, Germany and 

^ The'products from cotton meet the wants and necessities 
of all people in either torrid or temperate zones ; and the 
manufacture of cotton goods will never ^a-l of a -an^; 
except from the causes of some temporary, abnoimal reac- 
tion The worid opens to the American cotton manufac- 



20 

turer the most brilliant opportunities for the successful man- 
ufacture of finer and more costly goods than any that our 
mills have as yet undertaken. That the skill of the Amer- 
ican inventor will before long enable America to dictate to 
the world the cheap manufacture of fine cotton as success- 
fully as it now dictates the manufacture of Brussels carpet-, 
ing, depends only upon our continued ability to keep our 
young men to the study of practical industries and from the 
temptations of luxury and idleness. 

Virginia and Georgia may establish their cotton mills ; 
Northern capital may seek an outlet in the building of mills 
in all the cotton-producing States of the South ; but the 
mill owners of New England will have nothing to fear until 
the cotton States of the South are able to take on the invig- 
orating climate ol New England, which is a perpetual stim- 
ulator of patient industry and ingenious contrivance. Our 
capitalists will help them build their mills ; our mechanics 
will furnish them their machinery; but nature herself can- 
not give them our mountain breezes and the invigoration 
which comes from the rugged climate of our New England 
homes. 

That the coarser products of the mill may not be manu- 
factured to advantage, on the soil of the cotton-raising States 
of the South, no observing man would question — but New 
England has the vantage ground for all the finer produc- 
tions of the mill and loom, and the qualities of its climate 
must always secure for it the vantage ground of all that 
depends upon patient and persistent industry. 

Our commerce, once so prosperous, has not yet recov- 
ered from the blow it received during the suppression of 
the Rebellion. But it is on the way to renewed health 
and life. Government will yet come to the aid of the mer- 
chant, and subsidies for ships will be considered as much a 
part of governmental duty in encouraging the art of ship 



21 

building, as have been subsidies for railroads to aid our in- 
ternal commerce. Though for a brief time this sceptre of 
dominion has passed into other hands, the race will be to 
the nation, which secures culture for the largest proportion 
of its people. The New England fisheries will, as in days 
of old, be stimulated to a new life by the same legitimate 

means. 

New England need have no fears of her mills lying idle 
or of her homes becoming desolate so long as she adheres 
to the policy of frugality and industry, which successive 
generations of the fathers engrafted upon the sons. 

"Keep well to the front" has been a maxim we have well 
comprehended. The living men are front ; the well men 
are front ; the sturdy New England men are front ; in the 
rear are the idle and the ignorant, and in their companion- 
ship there is nothing of encouragement to civilization or 

the world. . 

Necessity is the mother of invention is a maxim which 
the experience and observation of men enable them thor- 
oucrhly to endorse. The maxim apparently originated in a 
o-reat physical necessity, such a necessity perhaps as seldom 
Tn our day comes to our New England. But with physical 
wants well supplied, we have a larger and broader and ever 
broadening field upon which, as we look out, we see the 
ever--rowing and ever-increasing wants of society and the 
world— in literature, in art, in mechanics, in agriculture— 
and the call is no less loud to us who enjoy the work of the 
skilled hands and trained minds of our predecessors and 
contemporaries to subdue the soil, bind the streams, chain 
the winds, store up the lightning, extend the power of 
steam, and to utilize the treasures of the earth, than to the 
master minds who have accomplished the grand results of 
which our civilization may well be proud. 

Art is worth nothing to the man who fails to comprehend 



22 

it. The various industries of life, simple as they may seem, 
are Chinese puzzles to the casual observer, who in his igno- 
rance may think them as transparent as the atmosphere. 

It is to disabuse the mind of the casual observer of this 
dangerous conclusion and to bring all our youth to the com- 
prehension of the fact that there is no little and unimport- 
ant thing in life, and that however insignificant may look 
the beginning, there is no climber who has yet even ap. 
proximated the top round of the ladder upon which he has 
started to ascend, that we need this continuous and ever- 
lasting preaching by word and by illustration. 

A very wealthy gentleman, whose son, some years since, 
graduated at Harvard, told me this item in his domestic 
history : " A few months before the graduation of my son, 
he said to me, * Father, I want to go into business and I 
would like to have your judgment of the business I had bet- 
ter engage in.'" 

The father replied : " I hoped you would be a profession- 
al and not a business man." 

Said the son : " I have looked the whole field over, and 
some active business will alone satisfy me. Now, what can 
I do }" After thinking the matter over for several days, 
the father again interrogated the son upon his plans for the 
future. " I am no less determined," said he ; " I must and 
will learn a business." After considerable thought the 
father said : " The wool business is a good business ; how 
would you like that ?" ''Very well," said the son. " But 
you will be obliged to give months and perhaps years of 
time to make yourself master of it." " Very well ; I am 
prepared." " You will have to work with the wool-sorters, 
in attic stories, and be the companion of illiterate and ill- 
bred men." " I am ready," said the son. " You will have 
to put on overalls and clothe yourself in harmony with your 
work." '' I am good for that, too," said the son. 



23 



Meeting a prominent wool merchant shortly afterwards 
the father asked him if he had a place for a boy in his store. 
" I am overrun with applications," responded the merchant. 
'' I have a son," continued the father, " who is determined 
to learn the wool business, and I desire you take him. " Oh," 
said the merchant, " I could do nothing with your boy." 
'* He is not much of a boy," said the father; "he is twenty- 
three years of age and has been graduated at Harvard." 
" Why," said the merchant, " I could do nothing for him 
unless he would go into the attic and work with the wool- 
sorters, and your son would not do that." 

Another conference was held between the father and the 
son, and the result was the son put on his overalls, went to 
work with the wool-sorters in the loft of the store, and now 
three years have passed— he is in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi with a hundred thousand dollars at his command, pur- 
chasing wool for his employers, and in a few years his 
knowledge and skill will make him indispensible to the 
house, and he will become a junior partner. 

This is the material out of which New England thrift has 
been made. It is still with us and of us and in us. Let us 
keep it. Let us foster it. Let us not forget that neither 
wealth or grand surroundings, mastery of Greek or Roman 
languages, fine address or cultivated manner, or any other 
sup'erstructure however adorning or inviting, can supply the 
bed-rock of individual or national greatness, upon which all 
truly successful men must build and national prosperity 
can alone be established. 

To-day citizens of Falmouth, by sacred and holy prayer ; 
by the presence of His Excellency, the Governor of the 
Commonwealth ; by the melody of music and song ; by the 
assemblage of the people in the many renewed expressions 
of their right to self-government, do we dedicate this beau- 
tiful town hall to the rights of citizenship as laid down by 



24 

the fathers — as better understood by their sons in the un 
folding progress of civilization and Christianity, and to th( 
still further unfolding which the future may have in ston 
for the sons who are to succeed us. 

In this hall may the discussion of the great civil polity o 
the Town, the State and the Nation be forever free. Ma3 
no hot and excited language mar the polish and beauty o 
self-respect, or respect for contemporaries whose right: 
to be heard are always equal with our own. 

And if in the progress of American citizenship, nev 
fields may be opened ; new alliances established, and j 
broader usefulness developed, may this Hall be foreve] 
the sacred arena, where the barometer of government shal' 
indicate the recognition of the highest individual liberty 
and the highest individual responsibility. 

And let it be inserted on banner and wall ; taught in th( 
home, the school, from the rostrum and pulpit — educatec 
industry is the protection of youth — the glory of manhood 
the security of American Institutions, and the basis o 
national wealth and prosperity. 




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